This paper presents a prospect theory-based model of insurance against mortality risk. The model accounts for five main puzzles from life insurance and annuity markets: under-annuitization; insufficient life insurance among the working age; excessive life insurance among the elderly; guarantee...

The case involves an insurance CEO choosing between different designs for a variable annuity product in light of hedging, marketing, and pricing issues. The case provides students with background on the economics and regulation of life insurance and variable annuities. Then it asks students to...

We study adverse selection on annuity markets in a general-equilibrium model of the closed economy. Agents differ in their health type and invest their assets on the annuity market. Without informational asymmetries themodel features a separating equilibrium in which each agent obtains an...

We study a closed economy featuring heterogeneous agents and exhibiting endogenous economic growth due to interfirm external effects. Individual agents differ in terms of their mortality profile. At birth, nature assigns a health status to each agent. Health type is private information and...

In the canonical model of investments, the optimal fractions in the risky assets do not depend on the time horizon. This is against empirical evidence, and against the typical recommendations of portfolio managers. We demonstrate that if the intertemporal coefficient of relative risk aversion is...

The "money's worth" measure has been used to assess whether annuities are fairly valued and also as evidence for adverse selection in the annuity market. However, a regulated life assurer with concerns about predicting long-run mortality may price annuities to reduce these risks which will...

This paper analyzes the regulatory framework of German immediate participating payout life annuities (PLAs), which offer guaranteed minimum benefits as well as participation in insurers' surpluses. Our particular focus lies on the mechanics of sharing surpluses between shareholders and...

A variable annuity (VA) is a deferred annuity that allows an annuitant to invest his/her contributions into a range of mutual funds. A separate account termed as sub-account is set up for the investment. Unlike a mutual fund, a VA offers a guaranteed minimum death benefit or GMDB and often...

Recently, a new type of variable annuity has been marketed to investors which is based on structured product-like investments instead of the mutual fund-like investments found in traditional variable annuities. Embedding a structured product into a variable annuity introduces substantial...